WWE Raw Review 6/16/2014: Field Set For WWE World Heavyweight Championship

We entered WWE Raw with two spots left open in the Money in the Bank ladder match for the WWE world heavyweight championship and by the end of the night we would have those spots filled.

Segments:
To start the show, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon hit the ring, with what was billed as a “major” announcement. It ended up being that they would have a battle royal for one of the remaining spots in the ladder and Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose would not be included in the match. This would led to Reigns later in the show doing something to iced coffees that Vicky Guerrero was getting for Stephanie and Triple H. More on that in a minute, but the other spot would be decided in a stretcher match between John Cena and Kane that was billed as the first match of this kind on Raw in 10 years.

Now back to Reigns, who had successfully distracted Vicky and doctored the iced coffees. He also suggested that Vicky was being mistreated by The Authority and to get him into the battle. Later in the night, Stephanie was talking with Renee Young and suddenly had to leave and make an exit.

Paul Heyman would step in after Stephanie left and take the opportunity to put over his client Cesaro. Heyman claimed he is the only man in this match with an adviser and that would help Cesaro win the championship match at Money in the Bank.

Triple H never drank his iced coffee as Vicky had spilled it. She returned moments later with another one for him to be informed that Stephanie was ill and that she should check on her. This would lead to her being puked on and Triple H says she is in charge and as he and Stephanie leave to seek medical attention. Kind of amusing that they say Daniel Bryan has no heart for not defending his title, but Stephanie and Hunter both leave because she has the stomach flu. Anyway, Roman Reigns enters as they leave and provokes Vicky into putting him in the Battle Royal.

John Cena had one of his terrible humor based segments that led to him basically giving his middle finger to The Authority. I guess he thinks they are number one.

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Matches:

It was a night of cool match-ups without many finishes. Seth Rollins got to work with Dolph Ziggler because that is the guy you want to face when you are looking to move up in the world. Not really, but it was just a set-up to a run-in for Dean Ambrose to try and get his hands on Rollins.

Ambrose wouldn’t get his hands on Rollins and Triple H would come on the screen and inform Dean he had some bad news for him as he would face “Bad News” Barrett. Again a cool match-up, but it was broken up by a Rollins run-in and Ambrose would attack him on the outside and get counted out.

Rusev got to squash Heath Slater who is now a “babyface” post 3MB? Not really sure, but what was a sure thing is that this match would not last longer than 90 seconds and it did not. But it did feature Slater telling Rusev to go back to Russia along with Lana. On second thought, if Lana did leave Raw, that would make Slater a “heel” to most male fans.

Rusev would return in the Battle Royal along with a cast of characters many of whom had little chance of winning a spot in the WWE World Title match. In the end, it came down to Bo Dallas, Rusev and Roman Reigns. Dallas would be eliminated, but that is third place, so that is a bronze medal for Bo. The square off between Rusev and Reigns made a really hot Cleveland crowd get very excited. In the end, Reigns eliminated Rusev and is at least at this point in the WWE world heavyweight championship match.

John Cena and Kane had about as good of a match as you could expect from those two. Shocking to no one over the age of eight, Cena wins and he is the final entry into the title match.

So coming out of Raw your main event looks like this for Money in Bank for WWE world heavyweight championship:

Kevin Hart was on Raw and did some interaction with Adam Rose as he ran into Rose in a backstage segment and did commentary during his match. After the match, Hart would leave with Rose’s entourage.

Remember Cody Rhodes promised a new partner for his brother Goldust this week? Well as it turned out, it was Cody dressed up looking like Goldust and being billed as “Stardust”. Cody had a giant star on his face, all in black and gold like his brother. This caused Twitter to bring up the Super Nintendo comparison of “Starman” from the old “Pro Wrestling” game for that system. He was pink and blue, but basically the same.

Bray Wyatt did what Bray does talking about power and announcing that Harper and Rowan will be in fact taking on the Usos for the tag-team titles at Money in the Bank. It was the great stuff we have some to expect from Bray. Can we class him as a “tweener” at this point? He clearly is over with fans despite still being cast as a villain. Perhaps the line in this promo that summed this up best was Wyatt proclaiming that he is “the change” that the people want. This was met with cheers from the Cleveland crowd.

Overall Show: 4 Starman’s out of 10

This show had a lot of Vince McMahon influences to it and had some of the horrible comedy that we have come to associate with him. Also, a another match we will likely get is Ambrose and Rollins. In the end this was a Raw of some big highs and bigger lows for me.

About James Borbath

James has covered the NBA and Toronto Raptors for 6 years for various publications as well as his own website. A native of Hamilton, Ontario where he attended the first ever Royal Rumble, James is a life long wrestling fan and has decided to trade to slams of a different kind in pro wrestling. He hopes his transition will be more successful than Dennis Rodman or Karl Malone. Among his talents is a better than average Randy Savage impression. Follow him on Twitter @condoonthemoon